


Try

by SLWalker



Series: Midnight Blue [6]
Category: Midnight Blue - Fandom, due South
Genre: F/M, Infertility
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-10
Updated: 2012-04-10
Packaged: 2017-11-03 09:17:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/379773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SLWalker/pseuds/SLWalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1991: What was going on in Mike and Cindy's lives, while Turnbull was new in Nipawin?  Deals frankly with women's issues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Try

**Author's Note:**

> Synonyms for Drunk is sort of an aside to this one; takes place during the story, though isn't incorporated into it.

_"Cin! Guess what?"_

She barely had time to set her car keys down before the phone had rang. "What?"

_"I'm getting a new rook."_

She could hear Mike smiling. Beaming, more accurately. It was pretty infectious even down the phone line.

It had only taken her a little while to realize that he hadn't been talking about chess when he spoke of his other rooks, back when they were dating. Apparently it was short for rookies; though, according to Mike, the preferred RCMP term was recruit. Not that he cared. When he went on about them -- eight in all -- he spoke with such pride and affection that the first thought that came into her head was that he would be a good father. Even though it wasn't fatherly affection, it was a pretty easy translation.

And frankly, it turned her on.

Not that she ever told Mike that. He wouldn't get it; he would look at her, eyes wide in incomprehension, blinking and obviously trying to grasp it and obviously failing utterly. She also never told him how badly she wanted to tie him to the bed with her pantyhose and see if she could get something more than quiet noises out of him, for the same reason. But that wasn't relevant at the moment anyway.

"When?" she asked, getting out of her jacket.

_"A month. We haven't gotten the file yet, I dunno who I'll be getting, but still. It's gonna be great."_

"Sounds like it," she said, smiling and shifting the phone back to the other hand. "You called just to tell me this?"

 _"Well, yeah."_ Mike sounded like it would never occur to him _not_ to. _"Okay, I've gotta go, I've already got three files open."_

"Okay. I love you. I'll put dinner in the oven."

_"Love you, too. See you tonight."_

She shook her head with a smile and hung up.

It wasn't the people that turned her on. Or him training other people. Or even him being proud and affectionate. It was that she could so easily draw the lines and see how he would handle his own children; could see how every little milestone would be a Big Deal for him, how he would dote and how she wouldn't have to be all alone when the midnight feedings and sleepless hours came.

They had talked about having kids. More than once, even before they were actually married; feeling each other out on the subject, getting comfortable with the idea. Cindy wanted children, and it was one of the biggest reasons why she'd had such a hard time when she had broken up with her now-ex. They had been dating for years, engaged forever, and they practically had the names picked out for the babies they were going to have. But she should have known that the long time dating and the long engagement was too long; that every time she went to start planning the wedding, she found herself distracted. That she could never picture the babies that they would have. That she couldn't see him in the role of a father. That she knew, though she only figured it out later, that she would be doing the bulk of the work. He was a decent man. But he lacked something.

Something Mike had.

She could see their children. Easily. But even more clearly, she could see Mike holding them. She had wanted children long before him, but now, she wanted children _with him_ , like she never quite had with her ex.

And she wanted to have as much enthusiastic sex as it took and then some to get those children.

Maybe it was time to bring the topic up again.

 

 

"Now?" Mike asked, eyebrows up. Perfectly open; no nervousness or apprehension, not even a flicker of it.

"Yeah." Cindy measured invisible weights between her hands, having stayed up to wait until he came in from work to talk about it. "We both have decent jobs. We're doing pretty well even with our mortgage. You'll be done with field training your rookie when I give birth, so you can take leave. And I think we're ready."

Mike chewed a thumbnail for a moment, thoughtfully, then nodded with a little breathless huff. "Okay."

Cindy grinned, reaching out to catch him by the front of his patrol jacket and drag him in, cutting off his startle with a kiss.

 

 

She went off birth control, and the sex really was enthusiastic.

They stayed up too late and woke up too early, and when she wasn't backing him into the couch, he was sneaking up on her to kiss her neck. Cindy was pretty sure that they both looked like they were blissfully dopey most of the time they were out in public. Not that they hadn't had a good bit of sex before -- even with off-set work schedules -- but it was different. There had always been love before, playful or sincere or profound, but now there was excitement for what they were trying to create, too. Wonder.

When she caught Mike looking at newspaper advertising for baby things, she nearly cried. The good kind of crying.

 

Mike's new rook inadvertently made things easier for her. Mike switched to day turn, which meant they had the entire afternoon and evening, and when he wasn't chattering on about Turnbull and what they had learned that day, what calls they had taken, he was planning which of their two spare upstairs bedrooms would be the baby's and how they could baby-proof the house, and when the talking stopped, the lovemaking began.

Cindy tried not to be disappointed when her period came exactly when it was supposed to.

 

Meeting Turnbull was a good experience. He was a beanpole of a young man, handsome and with terrific posture. And so young. He was also blushy and nervous, probably because he was meeting the Corporal's wife for the first time when she had stopped by the detachment on the way home from work.

Cindy found him endearing. His manners were impeccable. She could see why Mike was so enamored with him; the kid radiated earnestness and decency, like a halo. Everything she had heard about him matched what she could see on him, and she didn't bother explaining it to him when she told him, "Thank you."

Turnbull stammered out 'a pleasure to meet you, ma'am' and retreated to 414, and Mike looked at her with his eyebrows up, pure pride. "That one's special, Cin."

It wasn't the first time he said it, even though she doubted he would have said as much to Turnbull. Watching them interact, even briefly, showed her facets of her husband she'd never seen before; a teacher, a mentor, a weight that he wore well and naturally. She knew that he was a good training officer, but seeing it in action was, in a way, beautiful.

But what he showed her now was pure Mike; pride and affection and enthusiasm.

She hoped Turnbull realized how lucky he was. This one was special, too.

 

She started to worry when her second period came and went, right on time.

 

Mike went back on afternoon turn after two months. It had a natural chilling effect on their recently very steady sex life, but not too much of one. But Cindy was starting to feel it.

She tried to tell herself that it was silly. They were in their thirties, and there were any number of reasons why it wasn't necessarily going to be instant conception. Some people could have unprotected sex for years, and then _bam!_ , there would be a baby. Some people could conceive only having sex once on a broken condom. There was no exact timeline that had to be adhered to, everyone was different, sometimes it just didn't happen anywhere near the time it was supposed to. Mother Nature didn't take orders.

But she couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong.

Mike was oblivious to that feeling; she didn't want to worry him by telling him. And he _would_ worry; it wasn't something he showed many people -- if any, outside her -- but he could worry with the best of them. It seemed pointless to do that to him.

But when she grinned fiercely and pushed him back to the couch, getting a fist full of his hair and kissing him absolutely breathless, she couldn't get rid of the gnawing desperation in the pit of her stomach.

Sometimes, it didn't happen at all.

 

When her third period arrived, she called and made an appointment with her OB-GYN. When Mike pondered on what color you should paint a baby's room, she nearly cried. Not the good kind.

 

 

"I honestly don't think it's you, Cindy."

Cindy knew Marty Lansdowne professionally, personally and there wasn't anyone outside of Mike that she trusted with her body more. Marty was a handful of years older than Cindy, and one went into nursing and one went into obstetrics and gynecology, and she'd switched to Marty when Marty came back to Nipawin in order to get rid of the paternalistic prick who had been her prior OB-GYN. It was a great match and they became fast friends. Paps were a lot less awkward when you could joke through them, even for a nurse.

There were no jokes right now; Marty's gray eyes were serious, as she sat across from Cindy. They had already gone through all of the typical disclaimers, bandying them back and forth. In the end, Cindy just had to come right out and say, "I don't have any reason to think it, Marty, I just feel it."

She was so damn grateful for a doctor who took that seriously; who had seen Cindy in action and knew she wasn't prone to idle superstition or idle worry. Who knew that when she had a gut feeling, it was something to listen to. Everyone deserved one of those, and it said something about the world that they didn't have one.

Even then, though, Marty didn't think it was her. And as God-awful uneasy as it made her, Cindy was starting to think maybe it wasn't, either.

"Will you run the tests anyway?" she asked.

Marty nodded. "Yeah, of course. Your period just ended?"

"Yeah."

"We can start now."

 

 

Cindy didn't stop trying. Didn't tell Mike, either. Paid for the tests that weren't covered out of her own account, instead of their joint account, and spent the month doing everything that Marty had told her to. Prayed the entire month that it would all be pointless; that she would take a pregnancy test and get the right result.

It seemed like every unoccupied space of her mind was taken up with _baby_ and _why_ ; she pulled out all of the stops in keeping her anxiety from her husband. It wasn't hard. Mike was so used to her being direct, forthright; everything she ever held back from him was so small in comparison to this. The occasionally kinky thought that delighted her and aided in masturbation, the kinds of thoughts that would baffle him like no tomorrow.

But this was a lot bigger than tying her husband to a bed with pantyhose.

Sometimes she slipped, and she knew he could feel it. Sometimes she outright misdirected and told him about some incident at work that had irked her, instead of telling him about the big thing chewing on her.

The more she did it, the more entrenched it got.

Her fourth period came, and went.

 

 _"Cindy, everything's coming back normal."_ Marty's voice was professional calm, overlaying personal empathy. Cindy could hear both. Even as she sank into the kitchen chair, feeling a cold chill roll through her. _"Everything. There are more tests I can run, but..."_

But. But it was pointless. But it was just going to confirm what she already knew. But.

Cindy nodded, to herself. "Thanks, Marty."

There was a long pause, and then Marty asked the one question that Cindy knew was coming and never wanted to hear, _"Are you going to tell Mike?"_

Because there was still plenty left to be done. He would have to go and get tested. If there was a problem, and it wasn't on her end, they would have to figure out what to do with _him_. There were plenty of options, plenty of possibilities. If it turned out there was a problem, they could start on treatment. And if they failed, if there was something really wrong with him, she could _see_ the look in his eyes.

"Yeah," Cindy said, throat aching and heart tight. She managed to hang on long enough to say, "Thanks, Marty. I'll talk to you later."

She had barely hung up the phone when she started sobbing, curled around herself at the kitchen table.

 

 

She turned in long before Mike got home from work, but she wasn't asleep when he came to bed.

She felt his familiar weight slide into bed, and the warmth of him as he wound an arm around her side, snuggling up to her back and giving her a careful squeeze, designed not to wake her up.

She knew he was smiling, even in the dark; a sleepy, content little smile.

She didn't tell him.


End file.
